Counseling Center

Therapy

Whatever your concerns, a confidential conversation with a counselor in the counseling center can be beneficial. A counselor can help you sort out your situation, your feelings, your options, and resources that might be of help to you. If the support you need is not available on campus, a counselor can help you locate and connect with resources off campus.

Students seek counseling for a wide variety of concerns. For example, you may be uneasy about relationships with family, friends, roommates or other important people in your life; sex, sexual identity or sexual orientation; feelings of anxiety or panic; life decisions or direction; feelings of depression or hopelessness or thoughts of suicide; eating, weight or body image; drug or alcohol use; performance or creative blocks; achievement and motivation; self-esteem; adjusting to college; adjusting to a new language or culture; coping with a psychological or physical illness or disability; or coping with traumatic events or memories.

The role of the counseling center is to provide short-term, time-limited counseling (a maximum of 10 individual sessions per academic year), in order to offer services to as many students as possible. The number of group-counseling sessions is unlimited, as appropriate (click here for more information about these groups). In keeping with the mission of the division of student life, the counseling center strives to provide brief treatment to facilitate adjustment, improve functioning, achieve resolution of problems, and relieve acute symptoms as soon as possible.

Our services are available to eligible students whose concerns fall within our scope of practice. Those whose needs cannot be accommodated within our short-term treatment model will be referred to community resources for care. Such referrals could be given immediately following an intake, or they could be offered after some treatment and a further assessment of need has taken place. The center's counseling staff will assist the student in locating private referral sources in the community that match his or her need.

If you have begun counseling or psychiatric treatment at home or while away from campus, you may want to arrange continuing treatment now that you are here. At your request, the counseling center can help you get connected with an off-campus counselor who may meet your counseling and treatment needs more effectively. To request a referral or assistance in locating an off-campus clinician, call to schedule an appointment with a Whitworth counselor.

Counseling is confidential and is protected by law and by ethical standards.